Zoom 505

It's relatively easy to program. There's a learning curve, but that's true for all push-button programmables.

The manual itself is available online (lost mine long ago.) It's adequate, but not great.

I've been using this (lately) with some vintage tube amps--Ampeg Gemini II, and a Kalamazoo Bass 30 (with guitar.) I play different guitars, from a 70's LP Custom to a mid-90's Ibanez shredder.

I've owned this pedal for years, and had pretty much retired it. All the criticism of the stock sounds, distortion, etc., are well founded. Yes, it can be noisy in some settings. And the FX are limited in adjustablity (this pedal's largest flaw.)

If you want to sound like a metal monster, forget it.

However, now I'm putting this to real use. How? Careful re-programing of the patches. The secret is to start from nothing, then build up minimal layers of FX.

For instance:
Blues distortion-- 4 (30 is max)
ZNR (noise reduction) 5 (9 is max)
EQ -- 27 (0-50, 25 is the center "unchanged" setting)
Hall reverb - 1 (9 is max)

With this setting it kicks *** with the Ampeg, which is mostly clean. Of course, I'm trying to enhance the natural guitar sound, so I have lower expectations for the device.

If you think of the 505 as a simple overdrive pedal with a noise gate...and then realize you can layer on other FX as well (even if they are limited), it's pretty cool.

OK, but it's plastic. The little editing buttons tend to get clogged with dirt and dust. Sometimes they stick.

I don't think it will take a pounding. But for the price, it OK.

I dunno. It was cheap. Zoom is still around, and will gladly sell you a newer, better pedal.

This won't make you a guitar hero. But I'm glad I kept the pedal.

Subtlety was the key. The stock patches are "overkill," and many people don't like them. I don't like them. Maxed, the distortions aren't great. If your amp sucks, this will not save you...

But it really can enhance your sound. Start from zero, then build slowly. It's worth the time.

You sure can't beat the price. I bought mine for $30 new. What could they cost used?

I read the instructions - it took a couple of minutes, and away I went. No problem. It uses presets, so you have to decide which preset is closest to what you're after. Some dials and sliders would offer greater adjustability and "twiddlability", but you wouldn't be able to get this clever little pedal for the price it is if it had these features.

It's ok. If it's sometimes too shrill or middley, adjust the tone on your amp or your guitar (for goodness sake!). It can be a bit noisy, but if most people who buy these cheap little pedals use cheap, badly shielded guitars, cheap leads and cheap amps, of course there's going to be noise. Played with a decent guitar and reasonable leads it's fine. Don't believe the people who blame the noise from their cheap chinese guitars on their processor chain or cables.

I have never, ever, ever had any issues with it. That is after storing it in a damp garage while I was away. I've dropped it, dropped things on it and its never gone wrong. Not bad for a cheap lump of plastic.

N/A

I play loads of stuff from thrash to Van-Halen tapping cheese rock, prog, blues, jazz, samba, folk, slide and have done for over fifteen years. I prefer to use my old westone thunder (1984) and Marshall Master lead combo (1960s / 1970s white edge), Dunlop cry baby, couploe of other bits band bobs.

*Hint
Buy yourself a volume pedal and a splitter cable for the pedal socket and you will double how good this little box is. A little smasher for the price!

this is debatable. sometimes while moving the 505 i accidentally may push one of the edit buttons and have to reach for the manual to sort it. its easy with the manual but a bit tricky if u havnt touched it for a while. switching it on & off doesn't solve it either. you have to press the correct sequence of buttons to sort it.
once u get in the swing of it i think editing is easy. the manual is adequate .. albeit a sheet of folded paper. a small booklet may have been handy .. but then its easier to scan a sheet of paper.

well im a hobbyist. mainly indoor playing using midi for backing tracks. the output of the 505 ive got patched into a Zoom 1201 .. about the same era .. and the results are great. with min chorus and delay on the 505 i can add better fx from the 1201 .. plus i can eq the levels. the 505 has a high output so i can turn the final signal down if im mixing and theres not much amp noise.
my main guitars are Washburn .. dual humbuckers. just purchased a Ibanez S470 & theres no drastic`change in the sound .. different tones but still a solid fat sound.
sometimes a sound may be reminiscent .. but i prefer to get the best sound i can rather than re-create one. those ping-pong / voice / pitch / out of tune type sounds i avoid. a good heavy tone with loads of sustain pleases me and i can get a few variations from this 505.
the audio from this 505 eventually goes thru my mixer and to headphones / amp. i cant really hear this noise that others speak of. there can be some hiss with high level distortion settings .. but i find the gate not too bad. the FQY range (quality)is very good with a high headroom on my 505.

its now almost 10years old. its still working but i have to find a replacement.keep my fingers crossed egh ? ha
so far its been a shear bargain.

not to date

i like lots of styles. i dont think its set to emulate anyone in particular .. but ive a few patches suitable for soloing which i like.

using the cleaner settings .. i must say it helps with some reverb.

i need to replace it as its getting old. ive just bought a RP350 and have to say the 505 blows it away! maybee theres something set wrong or its just faulty .. but im not happy. i dont expect to be able to copy the 505 tones ... in fact something new would be a change .. but the RP350 sounds .. thin - gritty - compressed - low output.

i wish the 505 had a expression pedal fitted. ive got a separate pedal .. but to be honest its too much bother to wire it all up .. & the wires are a pain.

Didn't have that much experience with racks of multi-effects before this so I did initially find it a bit of a work to set all parameters. Once you've done that it is pretty easy. But you can't dial anything playing live. Of course as it it is a multieffect you can preset 30 or something sounds which of course is handy.
The headphone output was pretty useless to me as the sound coming out is so radically different from what you get through and amp

I use a modified Telecaster Custom and a 70's Fender Twin Reverb. Bought this a while after all my other pedals and my amp (Fender75). had been stolen so I couldn't cough up that much money. I was quite satisfied initally but after a while I noticed that this box seriously worsened the sound quality in virtually every setting.
As I nowadays mostly tend to look for effects that allow my guitars original sound to come through this thing is not for me.
I guess you could find one or two useful sounds.

Used it for 5-6 years, haven't failed once.

Haven't dealt with them

Been playing as an amateur for about 25 years.Play mainly rock, reggae and some jazz. The ZOOM was allright for me at a time when I couldn't afford "the real" thing so I guess it could be a useful and cheap alternative for beginners. For my part it has totally put me off multi-effects and digitalized sounds and I have continued to build up my effect chain witha MXR Comp, Ibanez FL301DX flanger, Lovepedal Overdrive, DC Demonizer, Cry Baby Wha, EB Volume pedal.
A few things missing still, but I'll get there...

The unit is labeled clearly enough to where you can figure it out as you go. I hadn't touched this unit in years and I was able to pick it right back up. The effects are easy to sort through and save.

Well, in a word, lousy. The effects are generally alright, but I have very little use for a unit that supplies delay (for instance) without the ability to change how many repeats you get or how long the delay time is.

The presets sound fair, and if you don't mind sticking with what you're given, you can get some halfway decent sounds. For guitar, this is restrictive and severely limiting.

The modulation effects are lacking, again with no true control. The chorus is decent, if a little weak, but the flange is nice and thick. Phase is also weak, and sounds very thin and wimpy.

The distortions were nauseating. Nothing more to say.

The amp simulation is lousy, as well as the acoustic simulator. Compared to today's multi-FX units, this thing is a dinosaur, so I didn't especially expect a real-sounding acoustic emulator. The compressors are surprisingly good, but again a lack of control is the downfall fo this unit. The hallmark of a good amp sim is the ability to hook directly to a mixer and record with some degree of realism, which unfortunately is not the case for the Zoom 505.

The pitch shifting functions are the saving grace on this unit. They're really quite cool, and you get a decent amount of flexability. You can get perfect fifths, octave low, octave high, or octave low and high. I was able to cop a reasonably good 12-string sound out of it, which was neat.

This unit was *just* flexible enough to be used as a vocal processor for live applications. I snagged a couple of good patches for my vocals on a psychedelic folk show I'm doing, so I can't totally knock the unit.

Well, I've had this unit for over 10 years, so I have to commend Zoom on making a good, long-lasting product. It sat on a shelf for the last 7 years, and I pulled it out on a whim the other day. With a new set of batteries, this baby was just fine. Nice work, Zoom.

Never needed 'em. Should say something...

If you don't expect miracles, this unit can be used for very limited applications. All of the effects are decent but totally canned, so their window of application is pretty tiny. However, I liked what I heard on a few of them, so it was worth having.

As I said, I got this unit about 10 years ago, and it's served its purpose for that long. With the number-crunching power of the new multi-FX units (The Digitech RP series in particular), there is not much use for this product, and you'd be much better off going with something else. However, if you can snag this guy in a bargain bin, you may come across one or two presets that tickle your fancy.

Very easy to use, no need for a manual.

You can't get simular sounds of the artist, this is a low cost product.
The excellent thing is that you can use Phaser with Chorus or Flanger. Chorus and Phaser are cool, Flanger is OK, Pith and double mods are catastrophic. Compressor sounds very cool but it also creates loads of ear damaging noise. The distrosions are all ok expect for metal, that one is really crap. DT dist has a cool sound but creates a lot of noise even if you don't play, just like having a electrical problem. Rhytm distorsion is much better then anything i heard in all the multiefects. YOu can play cleans on hi gain things on it. Even with a lot of gain all the noise sounds very warm and valve like. Lead dist is also ok but it sqeells even more then all the others. This unit is impossible to use at koncerts or even rehersals. Can't get good sound with out beeing really NOIZY - this one is for home use only.

It's simple, doesen't create much problems or fails often.
Using this sqeel machine on a gig is a great way to ruin your band chances to make it someday.

This thing is good for beginers. The good thing about it is that oyu can get some really magical sounds combining chorus and phaser.
It doesen't matter what gear you use.
I wish other more expensive multiefects would have a feature with such good rhytm distorsions and a combination of suing chorus and phaser at once.

Quite easy.

This thing sound sucks. Really. The distortions are the worst i've ever heard. the moudulations suck too. the wah has too much trebele boost. the only ok effect is the delay. Sold it..

It's made of plastic. other than that it's fine.

never dealt with them.

this thing can't make one decent sound, and even if you find one - the bypass of this pedal is HORRIBLE, so I won't keep it in the chain even for one song.

Once you get your head around how the various controls work, setting the pedal up for your own patches isn't a problem. The display is a good size, and it's all pretty logical, IMO. The manual is just a sheet of A3, but it covers the basics OK - I guess that says it all, really!

Getting a good sound out of it is pretty easy, unlike some other multiFX I could mention. It's great to use live - set up the patches you want in sensible memory locations relative to each other, and there's next to nothing to go wrong.

I don't generally try to sound like anyone else, but you can get a good range of tones out of this unit that cover most of the bases.

Like most multiFX units I've used, it seems to major on distortion/overdrive FX - but the good news is that some of these are really pretty good, especially if you lay back off maximum on the input. The acoutic emulation may not sound much like a real acoustic, but I've gotten good mileage out of that tone for certain songs with my Strat copy.

Other high points are the modulation FX - chorus is warm and rich, the flanger's well useable, and the phaser will give a slightly thin tone that I find quite attractive.

The pitch mod FX are not particularly useable in a musical sense - the high octave isn't spot-on, which makes things painful, the low octave sounds OK, the fifth etc. settings are better, but limited in practice as it's not an intelligent harmonizer.

The wahs are better than nothing, and I've gigged with them, but there's no real richness there. The cab emulations don't really do what it says on the tin. The gate is not too bad as long as you tweak it right. The echoes are clean and what you'd expect from a digital unit, and the reverbs suit guitar well (they're a bit too "springy" for use on vocals etc., which my 505 has done when patched into a PA in extremis - probably no worse than the built-in reverbs on many an old pub PA out there, though).

Where all the FX except the distortions fall down is their lack of tweakability (which I think was improved in the Mk II version) - but that's the downside of a simple low-cost unit like this.

I've used it with an electro-acoustic and a Strat copy through a variety of amps. With the right amount of tweaking, it did both guitars proud.

A big minus point is that especially with some of the FX, this unit can be NOISY - the gate will help a bit, as will tweaking the amp tone controls. The main culprit seems to be the preamp section - the compressor/limiter is useful, but at the cost of introducing noise right at the start of the FX chain on some settings, and the gain on the distortiomn FX obviously makes this worse. I wouldn't say it's any noisier than the chain of discrete FX pedals you'd have to put together in order to equal it's functions, though! It's OK live generally, but you wouldn't want to record with it (unless you were after seashore-type sound effects, or even the occasional waterfall).

Never really had a problem with it. The big bright LED display eats PP9s, so you probably wouldn't want to rely on battery power for a gig. It's been used without a backup in pub gigs plenty of times, and has survived the odd beer with a shake and a chance to dry out. After about 8 years (I think), the switches and everything else still work fine. With a bit of a clean-up, I could probably pass it off as new.

Never needed it, so no opinion. It was cheap to buy. I suspect it would be cheaper to get another than get someone to repair it.

I play anything from jazz to pop covers to experimental, and have done so for over 30 years.

I bought it as I'd had all my FX pedals and amps ripped off years ago and was broke, so it covered quite a few bases in terms of getting me up and running again for very little money indeed.

It's given me an enormous amount of pleasure over the years, now I look back on it.

I ended up customizing it - if you plug a wah/swell-type pedal connection into the control input on the back, you can control volume, wah and pitch (Zoom sell a pedal for this, but I just rigged up my own with an old broken wah unit). If you rig up an external oscillator and plug it into that input, you then have modulation effects that it lacks - auto-wah, tremolo and vibrato.

In the course of rigging all this up, I discovered that if you short the live control input line to earth, the pedal ramps down then up again over about half a second. So I rigged up my own "electric plectrum" - covered a standard plastic plectrum with tinfoil and took a lead from it to the control signal connector. Provided the strings on the guitar are earthed (they should be), then you have access to plectrum-triggered swell, wah and pitch effects - great fun!

(Disclaimer: You can electrocute yourself playing around with this stuff if you don't know what you're doing - You have been warned! I did this, but that doesn't mean I'm recommending that anyone else do it.)

I now have a PODXT Live, but I think this little Zoom will still see use on those occasions when I want to take along some FX but not the whole rig, especially into situations where gear can come to harm or be ripped off. Funnily enough, although I'm aware that the Live is capable of many more subtleties etc. than the 505, some of the distortion units on the 505 give those on the Live a fair run for their money!

It has character despite its flaws, and it's very cheap for what it can do - what more do you need to know? If it were stiolen or lost, I'm not sure I'd replace it, though - if I was looking for another knockabout unit to take over what will now be its role, I'd probably check out what else is available, or maybe get the Mk II instead. On the other hand, I haven't checked out the second-hand prices for the 505, so just replacing like with like might be a no-brainer.

The Zoom 505 is too easy to use, you can get some good tones out of it but i like analoge better than digital, the patches easy once you look a the manual a few times

well im using a ibanez ex350 through a Marshall MG100DFX, it is a bit noisy at high levels of volume. you can get good eddie van halen tones like 'eruption' and some good metallica tones too

i dont know, iv never used it at a gig only in practice, i would always have a backup if u used it

never needed it

i play rock, hard rock, and metal i have been playing for 5 years now. i own a digitech grunge pedal and a marshall mini amp
Overall Rating - i think it is good but you should go analoge
digital tones are not that good

The Zoom 505 is a poor man's mult-effects pedal. Within this unit is some pretty good stuff. I got mine used and borrowed a manuel from a music shop put it on a copier machine because it has some surprises otherwise. It is FAIRLY easy to edit and get the right sounds out of it. After a little time of use, it becomes easy to edit.

The sound quality of the Zoom 505 is assorted. Some are not very usuable in my opinion. Some are worth the unit alone. My favorites are step!& lead (distortion) It is a second unit to supplement my Digitech multi-processor. I use it with a tranformer (AC) The OD kind of "clippy" the blues too dark, setting the pitch at a certain setting sounds like a 12 string; pretty cool. People talk about finding the holy grail. I think you can take 2 separate units and brands and blend them and find the holy grail sounds and tones.
pretty cool. but with trial and error, baby steps.

I would not gig with the Zoom 505 without a back-up.

In a pedal board, this is worthy to be included for the step phaser alone!! The lead (distortion) really rocks!! The noise reduction ZNR is ok. I do have the FP02 expression pedal and it works well with the pitch bend and wah. The auto-wah is not bad either. I am very tempted to try the G1 made by Zoom. The 32 bit processor. I think the FP02 works with it also.